Gaines Adams And The Contract Situation

By now you must have heard at least a quick mention of Chicago Bears defensive end Gaines Adams, and his untimely death from cardiac arrest at the age of 26. It’s an incredibly sad story, like all premature deaths, but there hasn’t been a lot of news on Adams himself, who had only been in the league for a few seasons and was not famous or infamous for his skill or outside life, besides admitting that he used marijuana the year he entered the NFL Draft. The fact that there isn’t a lot to write about him shows how young he was and how much of his career can never be played. There’s another part of this situation that I want to talk about too, however.

I just want to focus on a financial aspect of this. Jerry Azumah, a former cornerback of the Chicago Bears who now does coverage on Comcast Sportsnet, tweeted that since Adams was dead, his contract with the Bears had expired and the team did not technically owe any more money to him or his family. Before I continue, I’m not trying to paint the Bears organization in a bad light and say they’re heartless for not giving Adams’ family any money. The important word here is “technically,” and to be honest, it’s their money and they can use it however they want.

I later asked Azumah if that’s the usual case with NFL contracts: that it expires if the player dies under contract, and there is no money paid. He said that it’s standard, but wasn’t completely sure. That makes sense, since NFL players dying while being active are very infrequent cases that rarely happen.

After reading all this stuff, and realizing the various backgrounds of various NFL players, from Peyton Manning to Bart Scott (I just chose two random players), I propose some kind of clause in a contract to deal with the unlikely event of death. The reason I suggest this is because while more high-profile players like Brett Favre and Tom Brady have sponsorships giving them revenue besides their NFL contract, some less famous athletes don’t.

Take the example of Chris Henry. He died after falling out of a pickup truck while fighting with his fiancee. Henry left behind her and three children. Assuming the Bengals didn’t give any more money to the family after Henry died, how are they going to live? He wasn’t get a lot of money when he was alive, so how would his former fiancee support three children by herself?

The death clause wouldn’t be an outrageous sum of money, but it would be an amount that wouldn’t leave the surviving family in the dark with no source of income. It could be calculated by a percentage of the contract, such as 7-10%, or done in a case-by-case evaluation, since some contracts have different payment schedules than others. There could also be different brackets depending on the quantity of children, or other criteria defining the amount of money surviving family would receive.

I know I’m living in a dream world where football organizations would have the generosity to pay families of dead players, since they try to save every penny they can (I’m looking at you, Ralph Wilson). I also know that this seems like a lot of legal trouble to go through for something that will effect very few players, hopefully none of them. I don’t want to plagiarize the Starfish Story, but for the players and families that this would affect, it would probably mean a lot to them.

Please tell me your thoughts on this idea by either writing something in the comments or emailing me.